Lot 63: WILLIAM EDMONDSON ( circa 1870-1951)

Noah's Ark limestone 221/4 x 14 x 161/4 in. (56.5 x 37.5 x 41.5 cm.) Executed circa 1930. PROVENANCE Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York EXHIBITION Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee State Museum, William Edmondson: A Retrospective, 1981, p. 86, pl. 103 (illustrated). Washington, D.C., Corcoran Museum of Art, Black Folk Art, 1930-1980, (traveling show) 1983-1984, p. 90, cat. no. 113 (illustrated). New Orleans Museum of Art, Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, (traveling show) October 1993-January 1994, p. 153, pl. 72 (illustrated in color). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology, (traveling show) March 1998-December 1999, p. 64 (illustrated in color). New York, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, Masterpieces From the Robert M. Greenberg Collection, January-March 1999, p. 82 (illustrated in color). Nashville, Cheekwood Museum of Art, The Art of William Edmondson, (traveling show) January 2000-August 2001, p. 110, fig. 10. NOTES The simple, abstracted form of William Edmondson's Noah's Ark, pared down to its purest, volumetric essence is one the great sculptural masterpieces of 20th Century art, as well as Self-Taught art. Although titled Noah's Ark, the present lot has also been interpreted as a church or a reference to the Ark of the Covenant. Its importance to Edmondson is underscored by its original placement in the center of his backyard on top of a group of large stone slabs (see fig. 1). Louise Dahl-Wolfe's powerful photograph of Edmondson, sitting underneath Noah's Ark conveys the serene dignity and presence of both the sculpture and the artist. A stone carver active in Nashville, Tennessee during the Great Depression, William Edmondson was discovered by the Dahl-Wolfe who showed his work to Museum of Modern Art director Alfred Barr. The subsequent solo exhibition in 1937 was the first by a Self-Taught or Outsider artist, and the first of an African-American at MoMA. Noah's Ark is one of the rare works that speaks across cultures, aesthetic sensibilities and is equally at home in the context of 19th Century folk art, 20th Century Self-Taught art as well as modernist and contemporary sculpture. Its purity has echoes in Amish quilts and Shaker furniture objects as well as the modernist sculpture of Brancusi and 1960's Minimalism. Widely exhibited, it has been included in three influential surveys of Self-Taught art and featured in two Edmondson shows, including his most recent traveling retrospective. Deeply religious, Edmondson often claimed God was working through his hand--"I saw Him through the eye of faith and heard His voice through the spiritual ear until the heart understood" (W. Edmondson, The Art of William Edmondson, Nashville, 1999, p. 62). SALESROOM NOTICE The artist's correct birth and death dates are circa 1870-1951.